Thursday, February 9, 2012

Dessert with Breakfast???

My drive into work today started out as a torturous one! The residents of the apartment building where I am a social worker had asked me to pick up donuts to go with our morning coffee. So as I sat in Pittsburgh's nasty Parkway East traffic, I was stuck in a car filled with the amazing aroma of fresh baked donuts. The one cup of bran flakes with skim milk I had had for breakfast was not helping me fight the desire to pull over, throw the lid off the top box and just devour those donuts.

Then the DJ shared a health tip that he had recently heard - Individuals trying to lose weight who had dessert with their breakfast lost more weight than those who did not. WHAT?!? The rationale actually did make sense to me. 1) Eating the dessert in the morning gave you the entire day to burn off the extra calories vs. eating dessert after dinner. 2) Eating dessert in the morning helped to satisfy one's sweet tooth rather than fighting the sweet tooth all day before eventually giving in to the craving and eating way more sweets than you should.

I decided to put this tip to the test (after all - as my fellow Pittsburghers would all agree - Bubba from the 100.7FM morning show is a very reliable source!). Earlier today I sat down with my residents and slowly ate a fluffy vanilla cake donut covered with chocolate frosting and pink sprinkles. MMmmmmm . . . It was SO good! I purposely savored every single bite.

Here we are several hours later after a day that included the Food Bank bringing several full-size sheet cakes from Sam Club in their monthly delivery, multiple trips past the vending machine and an extremely late lunch. I truly have not been tempted once. When I see the cakes or the vending machines I automatically think back to the donut I enjoyed earlier rather than fighting with myself about sneaking a bite or getting a snack. On a day that would normally be filled with cravings, I haven't had a single one!

I'll report back to let you know how the rest of my day goes, but so far so good! I give this health tip a thumbs up!